Ebay - camera equipment - bogus 2nd chance offers

jww

Hi everyone,

I am not a huge ebay user, but I have purchased a few high dollar items in the last few years without any complaint or problems.

In the past week or so, I have been bidding on a few lenses that I felt would be really good deals if I could get them for my max bid.

I didn't win any of them (no biggie), but what really concerns me is how many bogus 2nd chance offers I have been getting after the auction is complete!! I bid on 4 - 5 lenses and have some 9 - 10 2nd chance offers from different email addresses!! (having an email address in the offer is usually a dead giveaway to be bogus by the way)

None of them were real as they did not appear in My Ebay and I did report them and ebay confirmed them to be bogus. My question... is this normal? How did they get my user name and my email address since I never have gone to their fake sites, nor supplied them with any info.

Anyway... I just wanted to pass on to fellow smugmuggers to be aware when bidding on ebay and really check out that 2nd chance offer as it is probably fake!!

jww - jwwWebDesign.smugmug.com

digitalpins

ebay has gotten really bad lately with the scams, I just had one with me also but I was smart enough not to deal with it and go on a deliver it. What happened was a person bids and wins then sends you and email saying they will send the payment through paypal and for you to get the tracking number and email them the tracking number then they will send the payment....... oh and their mailing address is in NIgeria they want the item for a wedding gift.........scam scam scam

For people new to ebay they will fall for it because it looks legit at first until you notice mail "Nigeria" in the small print in at the bottom of the email. Other than that while the item was up I kept getting emails that had nothing to with the item I had listed but it looks like they were asking questions on it.

So people new to ebay just be very carefull and dont click on any email on some thing you listed until you read every little thing.

I wont be using ebay anymore any time soon

ESiggins

Wow...
Thanks for the heads-up guys. I'm a bit of a recovering ebay adict and haven't used it in a while, but always look for deals. I'll remember to be very wary of ebay related emails from now on.

BeachBill

jww wrote:

None of them were real as they did not appear in My Ebay and I did report them and ebay confirmed them to be bogus. My question... is this normal? How did they get my user name and my email address since I never have gone to their fake sites, nor supplied them with any info.

Your username is visible in the bid history and ebay users can send mail, via ebay, to other ebay users. Were these offers sent via ebay's message system?

I have received spam like this after losing auctions on ebay (it's been more than a year since I lost an auction as I don't bid very often).

jww

BeachBill wrote:

Your username is visible in the bid history and ebay users can send mail, via ebay, to other ebay users. Were these offers sent via ebay's message system?

I have received spam like this after losing auctions on ebay (it's been more than a year since I lost an auction as I don't bid very often).

Sorry, that wasn't very clear. What I meant was I am curious how they associated my ebay user name to my home email address that the account is attached to without using the internal ebay message system.

...and to answer the question, no... none of these were sent via ebays messaging system which is why I suggest to always look in your MY EBAY to check on any message from ebay.

I just got another one today... however this one was just a plain email from someone with a yahoo account saying that the folks at ebay had told him that the winner failed to send payment blah blah blah.... and to send them my blah blah blah.. They didn't even try to make it official looking... pretty sad...

thanks!
jww

mwgrice

jww wrote:

Sorry, that wasn't very clear. What I meant was I am curious how they associated my ebay user name to my home email address that the account is attached to without using the internal ebay message system.

...and to answer the question, no... none of these were sent via ebays messaging system which is why I suggest to always look in your MY EBAY to check on any message from ebay.

I just got another one today... however this one was just a plain email from someone with a yahoo account saying that the folks at ebay had told him that the winner failed to send payment blah blah blah.... and to send them my blah blah blah.. They didn't even try to make it official looking... pretty sad...

thanks!
jww

Off hand I can think of three things:
1. They guessed at your email address based on your ebay user name, and sent it to many different addresses.
2. It was phishing--everyone else got one, too.
3. The sender or a friend had corresponded with you about another ebay purchase, so they could already associate your email address with your user name.

jww

mwgrice wrote:

Off hand I can think of three things:
1. They guessed at your email address based on your ebay user name, and sent it to many different addresses.
2. It was phishing--everyone else got one, too.
3. The sender or a friend had corresponded with you about another ebay purchase, so they could already associate your email address with your user name.

Hmmm... good thoughts... possibly 1 or even more possibly #3.

Though if 3, they have gone to quite a bit of trouble since I have reported each one not only to ebay, but got each of their different email accounts closed at both hotmail and yahoo..

oh well... I am not going too be too concerned. I just found it frustrating and wanted to give a warning to others. It's just not nice messing with folks while shopping for new glass.

Thanks! I appreciate it!

SpeshulEd

Just a word to the wise, second chance offers are illegal according to ebay's policy. If for some reason, the auction winner doesn't buy the item, the seller should contact ebay. Ebay will then credit the seller for their listing fee, and the seller can resell the item.

If anyone contacts you about a second chance offer, they're going against ebay's policy and should be reported to ebay.

digismile

Second Chance Offers are not illegal
At least in ebay canada, this is not a correct statement. Second chance offers are an integrated part of ebay's selling program. You can find this page under www.ebay.ca->Help->Selling->Second Chance Offers. There are restrictions and rules to this feature, but it is indeed legit.

It took 2 minutes, but here is ebay.com's help page on second chance offers.

SpeshulEd wrote:

Just a word to the wise, second chance offers are illegal according to ebay's policy. If for some reason, the auction winner doesn't buy the item, the seller should contact ebay. Ebay will then credit the seller for their listing fee, and the seller can resell the item.

If anyone contacts you about a second chance offer, they're going against ebay's policy and should be reported to ebay.

SpeshulEd

Whoa! You are correct. Its been awhile since I've bought and sold on ebay, but I could have sworn that was not the policy a few years back. When I started using ebay, I tried to offer someone a second chance offer and they refused as it was against ebay's policy. They pointed me to the page and everything. I then apologized, and relisted the item so the person could buy it. That was the only way to do it at the time, perhaps ebay changed for convenience over security.

digismile wrote:

At least in ebay canada, this is not a correct statement. Second chance offers are an integrated part of ebay's selling program. You can find this page under www.ebay.ca->Help->Selling->Second Chance Offers. There are restrictions and rules to this feature, but it is indeed legit.

It took 2 minutes, but here is ebay.com's help page on second chance offers.

zacker

ebay is now a scammers paradise... everyday you hear about these scammers trying stuff... be carefull with camera gear though, it seems to be the scammers items of choice! on another site i belong to, we have a member there who actually took a scammer on a run a round for about a month, e mailing back and forth for a used 20D and everytime our guy mentioned the price, it would be lowered by like $100.00 and the scammer wasnt even addressing it. and with every e mail, our guy would make more and more spelling and grammar mistakes till finally, near the end (before the scammer gave up) you could hardly read what he was saying to the scammer... must have drove him nuts and we all had a good laugh!
be carefull on ebay, its not as good a place as it sed to be. FM (fred miranda) seems to be the newest place to buy used gear, only thing i hate about buying there is, not only do you pay for the item and its shipping, most of the sellers WANT YOU to pay by Paypal AND pay the paypal fees.... lol

Bendr

I believe the 2nd chance offer is against e-bay policy if done privately out-side of e-bay, but if it is done through their system it is perfectly acceptable...

mr peas

Maybe they only do '2nd chance' scams in conjunction to themselves bidding on their own items in order to increase the price of what they're selling and once it hits a certain price and you lose to them (the same person selling bids on it until he wins), he/she passes the deal to you, and you'll be thinking *oh hey I have a second chance, I better take advantage and pay up). Then in reality, he's just wanting to take your money and leave you to dry.

You just have to be smart about it. Risking <$100 is not too bad versus $1000. Plus if you pay via PayPal you can always file a dispute. But if at any point they ask for you to pay via other means, then dont do it.

Also, watch out for pages which brings up a 'sign-in' page. Always look at the address and make sure you're under ebay.com only. If you need to sign back in, go to Ebay.com yourself and sign in. If you click on a button and it shows you the sign in page, expect it to be piracy in action. Better to go through Ebay.com and sign in yourself than save a few seconds and have your account hi-jacked.